Ink jet printers are widely used for printed document production. Ink jet printheads eject droplets of ink or other colorant onto a media substrate to form the printed text or image. As the droplet size affects the resolution of the print, there is a need to keep the ejected ink drops small which in turn requires that the ejection nozzles in the printhead be correspondingly small.
To prevent particulate contaminants from clogging the nozzles, some ink jet printers are designed such that positive air pressure is provided within the printheads. The air supplied to the printheads to create the positive pressure should be filtered to guard against clogging from within by airborne particles. Ais with all filters, the air filter must be periodically cleaned or replaced. Some businesses may have this done as part of a maintenance regime; however, often it is neglected until the printers' operation is compromised. It will be appreciated that printers used at home are even less likely to receive regular maintenance.
For this reason, it is expected that printers used in the Applicant's netpage system would ordinarily be susceptible to this problem. A detailed overview of the netpage system is provided below. Netpage printers are an important part of this system and a description of these is also set out below. These printers produce magazine quality printing in the form of bound documents. Because of the high-resolution printing, they have comparatively small ink nozzles formed using microelectromechanical techniques, which can easily clog from microscopic airborne contaminants. Furthermore, common forms of the printer, such as the wallprinter, are intended solely for use in a domestic environment where there is unlikely to be any regular maintenance regime in place.